The Cumbria Flood Appeal drawing

Back at the end of last year Cumbria was suddenly rather underwater. I live in Somerset, where we know a bit about flooding, but this is also a place where I have spent a lot of time over the years. I know people there and I know some of the roads and landmarks that got washed away, so I decided I would hold a little charity auction in aid of the flood appeal fund. The winner of the auction would get a drawing of a subject of their choosing that I would create from photographs and imagination – but I specified a swimming subject – swimming commissions have become a bit of a recent thing in my artwork recently and it gave me a focus and a target audience – several swimming groups that I belong to on Facebook. And of course what swimmer could fail to love the Lake District?

So here, I’d like to show you the drawing that I finally did – Richard (who won the auction) and his swimming buddy Ian, and a composite piece which summarizes many sunny swims in Merseyside….

The finished picture

By a lovely coincidence the weekend just gone was The Big Chill Swim 2016, a winter swimming gala run by Chillswim Ltd., in Windermere, Cumbria, and where I was swimming as were both Richard and Ian. The most recent drawing on my Cat of the Day sketchbook blog is of this fantastic event. Here we all are:

Me, with Richard & Ian in Cumbria at The Big Chill Swim

And here are my source photographs. I had begun by drawing the sea flat, as of course it generally is, but it was less interesting than the distortion of the photographs I was working with, so I curved everything, like in the photograph of the lighthouse, piling all the elements in to a small space together as one lively composition. They seemed both to be delighted with the drawing.